/* ===================

AX2E (AXESCON XACML 2.0 Engine) is the Java authorization engine, which implements OASIS XACML 2.0 standard.
Copyright (C) 2007 AXESCON LLC

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA


Contact: AXESCON LLC - info{at}axescon.com

 =================== */
package axescon.xacml.api;

import axescon.xacml.model.ctx.XacmlCtx;

import java.util.List;

/**
 * @author argyn
 *         Date: Oct 6, 2005
 *         Responsibilities: lookup a policy object by target matching.
 * This is a generic interface to be implemented
 * by stores, which can lookup policies by target matching.
 */
public interface PolicyStore {

    /**
     * find a policy by matching its target to request
     *
     * @param req request
     * @param ch context handler
     * @return List<PolicyObject>, null if not found
     */
    public List find(XacmlCtx req, CtxHandler ch, TargetMatcher tm) throws XacmlException;


    /**
     * gets policy factory. this method can be used by store to build policy objects.
     *
     * @return policy factory
     */
    PolicyFactory getPolicyFactory();

    /**
     * sets policy factory, which can be used to buid policy objects.
     * @param policyFactory
     */
    void setPolicyFactory(PolicyFactory policyFactory);


    /**
     * validates store configuration.
     * @param pe policy evaluator, which can be used to validate policy elements
     * @throws XacmlException
     */
    void validate(PolicyEvaluator pe)throws XacmlException;

}
